"Hatred" Reveal Trailer. Or as I like to call it, "The Next Big Controversy"

[Hebby]

For those who would give this a go, I imagine when you have gone through all the kill moves, you will loose interest pretty fast. The game offers nothing else and to me seems like a waste of time. Running around randomly slaughtering innocents isn't that shocking anymore, and it is clear what they did here. We cannot plaster together a decent game with some actual content, so we go for this and hope the shock factor will sell it for us. It worked for Manhunt I guess. But for this in 2014?...

 

[Mrkillhappy]

Like I said over on a Nichegamer article.



"I'm all for killing my fellow digital man en masse, but this goes too far for my tastes. Slaughtering people while they beg for mercy ain't my bag. ._.

With that said, I see no reason why this shouldn't be allowed to exist, same as everything else.

So long as some nut is playing this instead of actually DOING it. I'm all good."

I would have to agree with this the begging just makes it a bit more like this is someones fantasy which makes it kinda creepy to me. I don't think that games can cause real world violence but I have a feeling that people who buy this game might all ready have this kind of a type of fantasy, lets just seriously hope they leave their fantasy at just playing this game & not imitating it. As for my personal tastes on it the game is basically GTA, Saints Row, & Hotline Miami with all the humor taken out so just an edgy game for angst ridden teens so no interest in playing it at all. Makes me think of the old days when Jack Thompson would have been having wet dreams over this kind of shit. Also I think I can already here Fox News firing up over this, brace for impact people because gaming will come under attack again, *sigh* I'm getting to old for this shit.

 

[DerangedHobo]

But... really? Really. Really!?

It's just doing what every "mature" game ever has done. I do like the fact that the word "innocents" is used about a 1000 times during this thread, because if they fight back or also have a gun or if they have a swastika armband they are some how below humanity or they are another species. While the devs of this game might just be mentally masturbating and charging people for it, there's something to say about a species that will ignore the writing on the wall and focus on a caricature (to paraphrase Jim Sterling "There's a very real difference between video game violence and real life violence").

I'd like to think that I can trust my fellow man not to see or play "Hatred", drop all sense of morality and do it himself and if they were already fucked in the head they have a wealth of "acceptable" depictions of murder and real world violence to be inspired by.

I, for one, will happily drop £20 or more on this game and check it out.

 

[McKinsey]

I'm sorry, mates, I didn't read the whole thread, so maybe someone has already mentioned what I'm going to, but it bears repeating...

Judging by the reactions of the users here, I'm deducing your Postal experience started with the FPS sequel, Postal 2, rather than the original game. I feel it's my obligation to remind you that the original Postal didn't try to be self-aware, or a parody, or anything to that effect. It was your your standard top-down shoot'em up arcade, which differed from its contemporaries only in two aspects: 1) you weren't a hero saving the world, just a crazy bastard battling other heavily armed bastards (cops and, uh, militia, I presume, if militia is allowed to have rocket launchers,) and 2) Your goal was to exterminate everyone, and that included unarmed civilians running about in the streets.

That is, the game was about straight up killing the shit of every living soul, without making any kind of joke about it. It was a murder simulator, gory, tasteless and extremely ferocious, and we, the players, loved it for precisely this quality. It was a batshit insane inversion of the shooter genre, a big FUCK YOU to the critics of the medium and the fainthearted prudes. Then came Postal 2 and LOL'ed the series to the ground.

So yeah, barring the close-up executions (though the original Postal did have executions, and cries for mercy, and realistic depiction of violent actions,) Hatred looks exactly like Postal HD. The gameplay and the violence haven't changed; it's the attitude towards realistic violence that's changed, but that's on you. Don't blame the developers for trying to recreate a unique gaming experience.

 

[kuolonen]

snip

Obviously that was just my initial reaction to the article and the youtube video. I didn't read all 200 comments first. But hey, since I have your attention, hi there! You're a type of gamer that I didn't previously know exists. I have to admit, I'm curious as hell. What motivates you? I scrolled up a bit and found your post, but it just says you're tired of the thin veneer of patriotism over the top of the violence in the Modern Military Shooter genre. That doesn't really tell me a whole lot.

So! Let's dig deeper. In your own words, what do you find appealing about the game Hatred, as presented in the video?

Fair enough, though I'll take your word on that.

Why? Basically as said you surmised, if one likes shooters or the like, you usually get tired to death about the bland causes of justice they have, all +600 copies of them. Not counting games like spec ops the line of course but those far and few in between. If it were that there wasn't such saturation of this blandness, I maybe wouldn't even care for Hatred, but now I really need the catharsis that comes from playing a protagonist that spits in the face of everything that blandness represents.

Seriously, I have been trying to finish Watch_dogs for almost a month now, but it feels more like a chore than fun with Aiden_bland_Pierce. If I would go deeper into explaining the "blandness" I have been referring to, it would take more typing than I am willing to commit to posting here.

PS: I feel McKinsey is pretty spot-on about Postal. Heck, if Postal 3 had not been such unplayable disaster of a game, there would be no need for Hatred. (Man that game title though, so many uses for it)

 

[kuolonen]

It's just doing what every "mature" game ever has done. I do like the fact that the word "innocents" is used about a 1000 times during this thread, because if they fight back or also have a gun or if they have a swastika armband they are some how below humanity or they are another species.

Greetings there mister DerangedHobo. If I ever meet you in person, I would like to shake your hand just for that post. It is nice see someone else has picked up on that interesting way thinking about killing in games. It always bugged me, especially when these comments about the innocents and acceptable targets comes up.

 

[verdant monkai]

Well, we can't see any combo meters or scores or anything, so until we know more, I think it's probably safest to assume that there will be *no* gameplay at all aside from "kill civilians until the cops shoot you." A sandbox game, basically. Minus quests, objectives, resource management, crafting, or anything else that could make a sandbox game actually fun.

As for the psychology main character, you're joking, right? They deliberately worded that guy's opening monologue to be as vague as possible. Presumably so that the audience can project whatever type of -ism they want onto the protagonist, without the developers being pigeonholed into that camp. You can't explore what isn't there.

Yeah it doesn't look like its for me.

No I'm not joking, I find psychopaths interesting. I'm not saying whats there is fascinating and worth a look, I think it could be if they tried to flesh him out. Emphasis on I'd like him to be interesting, I'm not saying he actually is.

 

[thanatos388]

Well the game is self-aware enough to steal the DOOM logo. And it just looks like many sandbox games but without the pretense of a story or other characters. It's GTA with cheats on and nothing else I guess. But it's hard to say. Don't know why people are offended, its not very gory and this shit is similar to what people do in sandboxes anyways, hell you can go on rampages in inFAMOUS. Context does not change what you are doing then either.

 

[AT God]

Snip

Don't know if this thread is "dead" or not but I've never really had someone ask for my opinion and as an egomaniac I felt compelled to respond.

I honestly don't have a concise answer for what would make this game Postal done right. My whole stance on Postal is entirely subjective because I don't know the truth behind the game. (When I say Postal I am referring to 1 and 2, the Running With Scissors games, Postal 3 was a mess that RWS has even gone on to disown because of extraordinary circumstances that prevent RWS from really having any ability to fix their own product, haven't played Postal 3 and probably wont unless it is available legally for free).

I think to best answer the question, I have to explain what I feel mad the Postal games click for me. First of all, I have always been interested in controversy, as a kid I would read about controversial games and M rated games and hold them up as these awesome things because my parents wouldn't let me play them. The rare times I did get to play them, I held them in the highest regard because they were a forbidden fruit, I think this is similar to how people look back nostalgically on older games, I did the same for games that I was told I wasn't mature enough to play.

Given this stance on games, I always thought the Postal series was interesting. Both games had been released when I learned of them and reading through info on them always intrigued me. I remember reading how Postal 2 was the end all most violent game ever, the absolute worst of the worst and the kind of corrupting influence that would destroy the souls of anyone who played it. Then I would look at screenshots (this was before Youtube) and think this game really doesn't look any different from GTA3 (the other evil one at the time). From this understanding, I interpreted Postal 1 and Postal 2 thusly (and still do, although it is more refined)

Postal 1, the original from the 90's seemed like a game that basically said "Fuck you" to anyone who hides behind children when faced with something they didn't like. It was controversial when shown at trade shows, it had politicians and lawyers up in arms before release, and the entire game was essentially about killing people. The game was a series of isometric levels where the only objective was to reduce population by a certain percentage. (Later, I learned you only had to shoot enemies, the info available at the time implied you had to kill everyone, while you really only have to kill people who attempt to kill you). Postal 1 was full of dark imagery and you essentially were a member of the "Trench Coat Mafia," you killed people because you hated them and voices/demons told you to. As a game, it wasn't very fun, but the idea of a game where you played a truly evil man was interesting.

Postal 2 on the other hand was, among other things, about the reaction to Postal 1, as well as the "save the children" mentality that Postal and other games inspired at the time. Postal 2 was much more complex as a game and will take a bit more time to explain. Again, this is my understanding of the game and is entirely opinion based. Postal 2 attacked several issues relating to society and games at the time. The first aspect that it covered was basic US culture at the time. The game contains insensitive depictions of other cultures, such as suicide bombers that look like Bin Laden, rednecks addicted to firearms and rape, tree-hugging hippies who kill book readers, police brutality, cats/dogs being served as asian food, family values groups who shoot people for making violent games, etc. And while this seems like an attempt at being mean toward the groups involved, I always took it as a jab at how media represents these groups. I haven't met very many (or any for some) of these groups being mocked but the ones I have met do not fit these descriptions. I have met "tree hugging hippies" and gun loving rednecks and police officers and none of them has acted this way around me. The most well known of these interpretations in Postal 2 was the terrorists all dressing looking like Osama, having anthrax WMD launchers that made people vomit blood and die slowly etc. I never saw this as the game developers saying "Yeah, this is what those people are like." I would watch the news circa 2003 and see pundits clamoring to be as critical of Muslims as possible but maintain a minor tone so as to not appear out-right racist. And I viewed Postal 2's interpretations as the kind of thing that these people would produce if they didn't have to maintain that slight sense of dignity. I felt this sort of mockery of society was implied to all of the exaggerated groups depicted in the game. I mean you can literally find the WMDs the world went to war over, infiltrate a taliban sleeper camp, and kill hundreds of caricatures of Osama Bin Laden.

Another important aspect to Postal 2 was the mockery of censorship and the legal trouble Running with Scissors faced following Postal 1. Postal 2 has a difficulty setting named after the senator who tried to get Postal 1 banned, this gamemode has all weapons replaced with non-lethal tasers. In this vain, Postal 2 was also the first game to court a certain mantra for me, the good or evil playthrough. Other games had done this before but it was the first one for me and I still think is one of the most interesting examples of how player input affects game content. The one thing that Postal 2 holds over you the entire time is that you, the player, do not have to kill anyone the entire game. Violence happens all around you regardless but it is entirely possible to go through the whole game without spilling any blood. The splash screen when booting the game says "It's only as violent as you are." and I always found that fascinating. This aspect ties in to one of the ingame quests, where you have to ask people to sign a petition called "Make whiny congressmen play video games." I have always wanted to make someone who believed games make people violent play Postal 2 and the moment they attack another player, ask them why they were such a violent person? The game slants everything against you to make not attacking others extremely difficult, it gives you huge amounts of weapons and almost every objective leads to a shootout, but it never explicitly requires you to participate, you can always just walk away. The game will mock you at the end if you play the game this way but it is always an option.

Some other points about Postal 2 were how it was fairly self-aware of it's own opinion. Certain NPCs are running with scissors employees and while it is random whether or not civilians carry firearm,s RWS models always carry the two major weapons, the Assault rifle and shotgun. They will shoot anyone who attacks them, even the player, but will not engage the player for committing crimes towards others. This pokes fun at the image being placed on RWS, people condemned the game for being a violent murderous fantasy for psychopaths and while I felt it wasn't, the game devs mocked themselves by portraying themselves as the very thing they were being called. This was less prevalent in the original Postal 2, the expansion pack definitely laid it on heavier when you party at the CEO's house and he has an armory in his basement.

Finally, from a political standpoint, Postal 2 mocked both sides vehemently. It picked on liberal stereotypes by having hippies and "save the children" people being just as violent as anyone else, and it picked on conservatives with taunts and jabs thrown at the NRA and the army being deployed to slaughter the Osama lookalikes. The main character is undefinable as a character because he throws around comments against both sides, he jokes about the second amendment if you kill enough innocent people, he calls the various special interest groups names, he personifies a heavily lapsed Christian and someone who is entirely bound to his wife despite hating her guts, etc. The game makes fun of everything but never really promotes a certain agenda aside from have fun. A real psycho could play the game purely to fulfill violent fantasies or enact violence on certain groups, but the game never really judges you or picks a side. It criticizes the war on terror while also representing most middle easterners as terrorists, all it does is say that everyone is awful.

Okay, now that I have got that off my chest, I should probably answer your question about how "Hatred" could be Postal done right. Well, first off, I have watched the trailer since my first post and I am actually intrigued by the game. I think that there are two important ways the game could be more "postal done right," but I still sort of hope it does its own thing and makes it work. First off, I feel "Hatred" could essentially be Postal 1 but in the modern age. Hope to fix the various problems that made Postal 1 so hard to enjoy. The idea of a game wherein you simulate someone going Postal is still very prevalent, these occurrences haven't become any less common since Postal 1 was released.

If the game takes a more Postal 1 tone, I think it would be postal done right if it didn't break character AT ALL. I understand a lot of people want it to be self aware but I personally think it shouldn't, it should take the idea as seriously as possible. A lot of responses I have read seem to imply that they aren't interested because it looks like another game that takes its self to seriously, but I personally don't know of any games, other than maybe Postal 1, where you played the actual bad guy. Every game I have ever played, and I have played some dark games, has some minor hints at the player character actually being an antihero. The grand theft auto series has always done this. Claude/Tommy/CJ/Niko commit various evil acts, but within the narrative of the game, they are being told to do this by someone else. (Sandbox play doesn't count in my opinion because like in Postal 2, it is only as violent as you are) In GTA, you might be out murdering cops, but you are doing it because a mob-boss said to, or you are trying killing gang members, but only to save your friends from a corrupt policeman. In none of these games have you ever been acting on your own behalf with the express reason being to commit an evil act. I haven't played GTAV yet but I have watched some bits online and Trevor appears to be the comedy psychopath. Maybe I am wrong in thinking that he is not being forced into his actions but even so, he makes jokes at certain points that undermine his actions. The other series that rivals postal as violent murder simulators is Manhunt. You aren't the badguy in Manhunt. In Manhunt one, you play a man who was about to be executed by the state for unspecified crimes but instead you are forced to participate in a snuff film. You commit grisly murder but only because you are trying to put an end to the evil director who forced you into it. You still have a moral leg to stand on. Manhunt 2 makes it grayer but you still maintain a certain moral high ground. You were experimented on, you had your life taken from you and your violence is a result of a more evil man's attempt at creating a being without a conscience. Your violent actions are justified in that the character performing them has been mentally altered to act as an actual psychopath, Daniel Lamb is his own victim, his alter ego killed his family and he seeks revenge essentially against himself for the actions.

But to my knowledge, no (commercial) game has ever taken the mindset of someone truly evil who acts evil purely because of their own reasoning. I think that if Hatred is literally a game about a man who starts killing people because he hates them and wishes for his own life to end, that would be an interesting concept that deserves a place in the medium. Films/Books have explored this concept before commercially, but no game has ever really done this to this level.

If Hatred was just that, a game about killing others as a last act before death, I think it could make for a great concept that would open up interesting debates about games, humanity, guns, what ever. My only fear is that the game will try to make a point. If the game makes a point, I think any logical debate about the ideas behind it would be secondary to whatever point it was trying to make.

This is where my Postal 2 impressions come in. Postal 2, as I described, seemed to try and avoid choosing sides by mocking both sides. However, many people interpreted it as racist or trying to make some kind of overall point about the various people it depicted, especially the Osama Bin Laden lookalikes. If Hatred as a game did make some point, like had a certain objective of eliminating only a specific demographic or anything that the a reasonable person would interpret as being a direct point, I feel that the game would have missed its opportunity. Admittedly, a game where you murder innocent unarmed people will bring about people arguing over certain issues, like guns, but that will be argued regardless. If the game directly takes a stance, it will be less fun to think about as a topic for debate because it would specifically endorse a stance. That doesn't invalidate it, Spec Ops could be seen as a heavy criticism of modern military weaponry, but it does steer the debate toward that field. If Hatred doesn't make any other points other than "You play as a guy who kills others," it might lead to a big debate over the related issues, like mental health, society, maybe guns, etc. So to summarize, I think it would be Postal done right if it stuck to the idea behind Postal 1, you play a man going Postal. Do not acknowledge the murder simulator argument like Postal 1 did, do not attempt to appear neutral by attacking both sides like Postal 2, just be a game about being an evil man committing a violent act. Don't have a good ending or a final boss fight with a corrupt policeman or have some commentary on police brutality or militarism, just be about a man being evil to humans. Even if the game isn't fun to play, it could at least be interesting for being the only commercial game where you play the true villain.


Edit: Upon rereading what Warpzone asked of me, and now that I have seen the trailer, I honestly don't have an answer as to what they could do to make it a game. I honestly don't think a direct remake of the Postal formula of "Kill everything" would be very fun. I think the point of the game would be best if it was simply the thing the trailer implies it is: Hatred. We have a massive amount of simulator games now, why not let this be the end-all Massacre simulator, no agenda behind it besides kill people and try and keep killing until someone stops you. The more I think about it, the more I think that as a game, the more poignant point the game could make would come at a drastic cost to gameplay because doing nothing but killing people without any other aspects would become boring. The idea of making it into Last Stand type of mode where you have to scavenge and hold out while performing combos or something would definitely make it more fun, but it would also obscure the ability to debate about the game. My current thought would be, assuming the game is just kill until you die, have a mode where there is some more options, like gather resources, craft weapons, score points or do combos or gain XP, etc, but also have a mode where there is no HUD or mechanics other than just "Kill until you die."

As for how it makes you feel while playing, I think it would be interesting if the game went for the kind of feeling I get playing the bad ending path in some games. Make part of the challenge of the game being required to do violent things to proceed. Make part of the difficulty be the player's own conscience telling them that they should stop playing. This probably cannot be done though since without any real backstory, we immediately ignore any real investment but if they pulled it off it would be great. Like how because I like the characters in Fallout 3, I cannot bring myself to play a truly evil character because that would involve the quest where you blow up a major city, killing many likable characters. If the game made me feel that way, that would be an amazing accomplishment but that might not be possible if all we know is the PC is evil and all the people you are out to kill are just targets.

Even if the game devs thought, lets just make a violent game to get publicity, I don't really care as long as they made a game that expresses an interesting take on violent games. While making a violent game for attention might be profitable, it doesn't make you rich since you attention doesn't equal huge amounts of money. If the game is awful and boring and then asks me for 60 dollars, I wont play it. And maybe a few thousand people will but after taxes and everything else, that still isn't much money. I think that if I were in the shoes of this developer, my endgame would be to make something new, and a game where the only objective is to kill people for the sake of killing them is definitely a new or at least unexplored idea.

Making it a fun video game sadly probably means compromising on any real artistic statement but then again I found Postal 2 lots of fun while others saw it as repetitive garbage so lets see what happens. Worst case scenario, its another crappy game to throw on the pile.

 

[WarpZone]

But... really? Really. Really!?

It's just doing what every "mature" game ever has done. I do like the fact that the word "innocents" is used about a 1000 times during this thread, because if they fight back or also have a gun or if they have a swastika armband they are some how below humanity or they are another species. While the devs of this game might just be mentally masturbating and charging people for it, there's something to say about a species that will ignore the writing on the wall and focus on a caricature (to paraphrase Jim Sterling "There's a very real difference between video game violence and real life violence").

I'd like to think that I can trust my fellow man not to see or play "Hatred", drop all sense of morality and do it himself and if they were already fucked in the head they have a wealth of "acceptable" depictions of murder and real world violence to be inspired by.

I, for one, will happily drop £20 or more on this game and check it out.

I don't see how what you said has anything to do with what I said. I was talking to that Wraith guy and I was surprised when he said that the violence is literally the only reason he plays GTA. Then you quoted that, and started talking about other peoples' posts.

My whole point is it's *not* doing what "every other 'mature' game ever has done." It is doing *less* than every other mature game. Every other mature game has had a plot, characters, a story, gameplay, goals, mechanics and systems all reenforcing a central theme.

The video shows exactly one gameplay mechanic (shoot civilians,) an incredibly one-note aesthetic (modern grey blandness with absolutely NO distinguishing characteristics,) and a story that literally says up front "My story is pointless and you shouldn't care about it."

MadWorld minus the comic book aesthetic, Killzone 2 minus the sci-fi setting, Prototype minus shapeshifting. And color. In short, anything I can think of it compare it to has had anything and everything interesting stripped away, leaving this boring grey slog.

Nobody here is saying that playing Hatred will cause people to go nuts and start murdering people, which is the argument that your reply appears to be trying to refute, even though I didn't say anything like that to Wraith. What most of us are saying is that none of us can understand why the main character of Hatred is going on HIS rampage.

That's how badly the game is presenting itself in the video. It doesn't read. It doesn't translate. It just comes across like somebody who's never played a video game in their life, but heard on the news that video games are super-violent, tried to cash in on that trend by making "the violentest video game evar."

It feels hollow and insincere, is what I am saying. It feels lazy and painstakingly generic. I don't buy it. I don't get it. I can't understand why anybody would react positively to it. It feels like a straw man argument, albeit one that somebody sunk a lot of time and effort into rendering and animating. And that continues to confuse me.

Why would anybody play this? Make no mistake: I don't mean "what kind of sicko would enjoy murdering people." I mean "Why would anybody play a video game that makes pretend shooting people this BORING when there are thousands of much more interesting video games out there that makes pretend shooting people fun and rewarding?"

Hatred does to action games what Twilight does to romance movies.

It doesn't look fun.

 

[WarpZone]

Snip

Snip

Awesome, now we're actually getting somewhere.

I didn't realize that liking something just because your parents hated it was such a formative experience for you. I mean, I grew up seeing those sega and playstation ads that were all like "your mom doesn't want you to play this game," but I never took them SERIOUSLY. Mortal Kombat was this awesome arcade game where you can rip a guy's head off when you win. At the time, that had never been done before. That made it interesting.

The genesis version of the game is better than the SNES version of the game because it's more true to the original, not because my mom's less offended by the SNES version that replaces all the blood with sweat. That would be silly. What am I going to do, make a list of all the things in the world my mom doesn't like just so I can go do them? And even if I had that mentality as a teenager, why on earth would I still be thinking like that as an adult?

Thanks for the history lesson on Postal games. I honestly didn't know that much about them. I was under the impression Postal 2 was just GTA with a third person camera and a pee button. Really the ability to pee on people is more interesting than the ability to shoot people. *Lots* of games let you shoot people.

Now, very few games let you shoot civilians or allies, and even fewer games make shooting civilians or allies an interesting moment of play. So you'd think that would be the most interesting element of Postal. But nah. Fallout 2 did it much better. You can shoot any NPC at any time, whether they're a quest-giver or a shopkeep or a child on the street. They will fight back, run away, or both. If you manage to kill them, you can loot the bodies, and sometimes the contents of their pockets tell you more about what kinda person they were in life than their dialogue options did. There's one particular bar scene in which pulling a gun at the right time will cause the room to erupt into anarchy, with rivals shooting each other as much as you. It's a shame that going through doors is something the AI can't manage, because everything else about the consequences of violence is modeled extremely consistently, albeit through the lens of a clunky turn-based system and steeped in post-aocalyptia lore.

So yeah. Postal 2 for me has always been "that game with the pee button." Because it wasn't doing anything else particularly interesting.

Now I find out that there's a ton of gratuitous racism in there. So I guess that would make it a little bit more like BoneTown. I'm going to be honest, here, I didn't really understand what BoneTown was going for, either. I mean, it SAYS it's going for a no-holds-barred game about fighting, fucking, and doing drugs, but it comes across as this really awkward platformer with bad controls, unlikeable characters, and terrible gameplay. One thing it wasn't was uninteresting. There was constantly something new happening that made me go "What the fuck? They put THAT in? Why!?" This ranges from lame puns (Aguaman) to racial stereotypes that I didn't even know existed. (Huh. Redneck Jews are a thing? I didn't know that. All the rednecks I know are Catholic.)

I can't speak to any of the satire that informed Postal and Postal 2. I can say that just throwing around racial stereotypes for their own sake, in an effort to be anti-PC just doesn't make for good entertainment.

(Though, I have to say, if you're going to do it, it usually works best when you know where you're coming from, along the lines of Margaret Cho, Jeff Foxworthy, etc. The appeal of their acts isn't "I'm that group, therefore I'm allowed to make these jokes." The appeal is that they can actually drill down through 30+ years of life experiences and talk about just the funniest moments. You don't get the same amount of funny by just taking the lazy way out and going "black people eat fried chicken" suddenly in the middle of a scene.)

Glad to hear you watched the trailer. I feel like that will probably improve the quality of this conversation.

My main problem with the game the trailer implies is that it is *not* a simulation of somebody going postal. It does *not* sound like some crazy person's manifesto. Those crazy manifestos the police find are always full of reasons and reasoning. Pointing fingers and assigning blame. Full of specifics. In real life, crazy people have reasons for going crazy. This is just "TV crazy." (Which can actually work for an antagonist, though audiences are gradually getting more skeptical and harder to scare without at least some allusion to a mental illness they've heard of before.) But why would you apply that sort of motivation to the protagonist?

The true horror of Columbine is not that some kid shot up a classroom full of kids. It's that some kid was bullied and picked on and had no friends or support network and started to quietly resent everyone and everything in his life until finally he twisted himself into a mental state in which lashing out blindly against society itself made more sense to him than not doing so. If it happened to him, why, it could happen to any kid! It could happen to your kid! That's the scary part, and in my opinion, it's what a game about a horrible public massacre *should* be exploring.

Hatred, the game, as depicted in this trailer, has nothing to do with that. It's a cartoonish "I hate everything for no good reason" villain, presented entirely straight-faced. Even as an arthouse indie throwaway one-shot ten minute experimental experience, it makes NO SENSE to play this game unless you're the kind of person who honestly believes that bad guys cause violence in real life simply for the SAKE of causing violence.

That never happens in real life. In real life, the "bad guys" have reasons for doing the things they do, whether it's a drug smuggler shooting up a boat because a deal went south, or a paranoid schizophrenic setting up time bombs in a public place because they're off their meds and this is as close as they can come to attacking an abstract concept like "Capitalism."

Games like GTA don't have a story because they're trying to provide you with an *excuse* to kill cops and hookers. They have a story because in real life anyone who goes around killing cops and hookers was motivated by *something.* You don't get a "more realistic" game by cutting out all pretense at telling a story. You get a less realistic one.

Now, if Hatred does turn out to be some kinda massacre-simulator (which, let's be honest, it is trying WAY TOO HARD to present itself as right now,) then there is a place for that as a museum piece. But I would hope it was set up better than this. This is NOT a portrayal of a man with nothing left to live for taking out his frustrations on society as his last desperate. It is a cartoonish caricature of that.

I'm glad you can at least see now why I'm scratching my head and asking "how is this fun?" I think that's what a lot of people in this thread are doing. Once you get past the whole "there ware only two sides to this issue, FOR Hatred or AGAINST video games" false dichotomy, it becomes a lot easier to actually have a conversation about this.

I'm not satisfied with "just another crappy game to throw on the pile." The developer is making a deliberate effort to buck public perceptions of good taste with this title. I want that creative decision to actually MEAN something. Otherwise, what was the point of rocking the boat in the first place?

 

[WarpZone]

Fair enough, though I'll take your word on that.

Why? Basically as said you surmised, if one likes shooters or the like, you usually get tired to death about the bland causes of justice they have, all +600 copies of them. Not counting games like spec ops the line of course but those far and few in between. If it were that there wasn't such saturation of this blandness, I maybe wouldn't even care for Hatred, but now I really need the catharsis that comes from playing a protagonist that spits in the face of everything that blandness represents.

Seriously, I have been trying to finish Watch_dogs for almost a month now, but it feels more like a chore than fun with Aiden_bland_Pierce. If I would go deeper into explaining the "blandness" I have been referring to, it would take more typing than I am willing to commit to posting here.

PS: I feel McKinsey is pretty spot-on about Postal. Heck, if Postal 3 had not been such unplayable disaster of a game, there would be no need for Hatred. (Man that game title though, so many uses for it)

Heh. "Watch Dogs, the game so disappointing it made Hatred look good!"

But surely the solution to that conundrum is to throw Watch Dogs in the garbage and play a good game instead! Seriously, think about what you're saying. NotImportant is not a more interesting character than Aiden Pierce. He's just LESS of a character than Aiden Pierce. The polar opposite of Aiden Pierce with his "iconic" baseball cap is not a black and white Aiden with less to say. It's Bayonetta riding a T-rex equipped with flamethrowers. (And why the hell isn't anybody making an open-world destruction sandbox based on THAT!?)

 

[WarpZone]

Well the game is self-aware enough to steal the DOOM logo. And it just looks like many sandbox games but without the pretense of a story or other characters. It's GTA with cheats on and nothing else I guess. But it's hard to say. Don't know why people are offended, its not very gory and this shit is similar to what people do in sandboxes anyways, hell you can go on rampages in inFAMOUS. Context does not change what you are doing then either.

I can't speak for everyone else, but I'm offended because this game is a one-trick pony, and we already have much better games that can do that one trick as well as a whole lot more. Including, as you say, inFAMOUS.

I'm offended that they think pandering to the mainstream news media will result in increased sales. I'm offended that they literally didn't bother to give the main character any motivation at all. I'm offended that the developer expects gamers to identify with an inherently unlikable protagonist. I'm offended that they think this is good enough. I'm offended that they made a video game whose only function is pandering to people who don't play video games.

I support free speech. I play violent video games all the time. I am even interested in seeing the world through the eyes of a madman.

The trailer for Hatred offends me on every possible level.

Why doesn't it offend you? Don't you expect better?

 

[WarpZone]

So yeah, barring the close-up executions (though the original Postal did have executions, and cries for mercy, and realistic depiction of violent actions,) Hatred looks exactly like Postal HD. The gameplay and the violence haven't changed; it's the attitude towards realistic violence that's changed, but that's on you. Don't blame the developers for trying to recreate a unique gaming experience.

Okay, that's information I didn't have before. I can totally get behind someone trying to create a spiritual successor to the original game in an obscure indie franchise that eventually shark-jumped itself to death. Everything I've said up until this post has been my reaction to the trailer itself and the cultural landscape we occupy at this moment in time.

Odd that "it's a remake" was all I needed to hear. But... going back to your roots? I can actually respect that.

Now if only (insert franchise here) would do the same!

 

[DerangedHobo]

It is doing *less* than every other mature game. Every other mature game has had a plot, characters, a story, gameplay, goals, mechanics and systems all reenforcing a central theme.

How do you know Hatred isn't doing that? I must of missed some key statements from the devs because last time I checked thsi was just a trailer with the game releasing in at least 5+ months.

MadWorld minus the comic book aesthetic, Killzone 2 minus the sci-fi setting, Prototype minus shapeshifting. And color. In short, anything I can think of it compare it to has had anything and everything interesting stripped away, leaving this boring grey slog.

Again, just because that is all that you can discern from the trailer does that mean that that's all there is to the game? This trailer was obviously meant to drum up talk about that game and it has (clearly) achieved that goal. And let's say for a second that just killing random people is all there is to the game, with a grey colour filter and executions. If it laid all of this out bare and has caused this much controversy... surely it is a more or less original idea? Call it contrarian, call it an homage to the origianl postal but it seems pretty original to me and if Spec Ops The Line can get a pass because of it's low rent story, repetitive gameplay and "War is hell" statement why can't this?

Nobody here is saying that playing Hatred will cause people to go nuts and start murdering people

I've seen enough people in this thread reference "12 year old psychopaths" and other references to some edgy teenager picking this game up. The logical conlcusion to that statement isn't hard to reach. Of course no one was saying it would make people go nuts but I definitely got the vibe that people thought it was aimed at crazy loner assholes.

What most of us are saying is that none of us can understand why the main character of Hatred is going on HIS rampage.

I got a pretty good idea of why he did it, he hated life, the world at large and he chose to go out killing people. I mean say he's a social darwinist, say he's a nihilist, a manic depressive or just a psychopath, do you really need a specific label for his "ideology" or lack there of?

It doesn't translate, it doesn't read

Again, that's personal preference. I was interested beacuse it dispensed with any pleasentries and just said "Here, this trailer depicts a murder simulator with destructo physics, get hype". That's fine with me, sure you can have your art games, your games that disregard story and go for fun mechanics (i.e. Hotline Miami) and I can have my murder sims which let me kill a bit of time and stress.

It feels hollow and insincere, is what I am saying. It feels lazy and painstakingly generic. I don't buy it. I don't get it. I can't understand why anybody would react positively to it.

And I can't understand why people are reacting so negatively to it, how people are talking about how this game is sick or a joke of a game. People even defended GTA and Prototype for their mass murder and crime sprees which confused me. Do people want their violence wearing a fucking nice dress and some makeup? When I jack a car and run over 15 "innocent" bystanders do I have to have it in colour and do I have to get a point bonus or listen to a radio station to make it special?

I mean "Why would anybody play a video game that makes pretend shooting people this BORING when there are thousands of much more interesting video games out there that makes pretend shooting people fun and rewarding?"

I'd argue that the lack of a point system or dress up does make it appealing. It's just pure chaos and violence for shits and giggles. To paraphrase Yahtzee "It stimulates that cave man part of your brain that made you kick down your brother's sand castle".

 

[WarpZone]

How do you know Hatred isn't doing that? I must of missed some key statements from the devs because last time I checked thsi was just a trailer with the game releasing in at least 5+ months.

Because I'm taking the trailer at face-value. It shows the guy saying "My name is not important." I believe it. But then where can you go from there if you were to include a story? It's a non-starter.

Also he's phrasing his rant in a strangely generic style of speech that nobody would ever use in real life. I honestly don't even think the person who wrote the guy's dialogue for this trailer knows what the guy's motivations are.

Again, just because that is all that you can discern from the trailer does that mean that that's all there is to the game? This trailer was obviously meant to drum up talk about that game and it has (clearly) achieved that goal.

Not necessarily. But you generally try to show off a game's selling points in a trailer like this one. Literally the only thing the video chooses to tell you about the game is "it's violent." Since there are tons of violent games already on the market, I don't see the point. I'm still wiaitng for the video to tell me what makes this violent game special amid a sea of violent games, and the video's like "whelp, all done! You want to buy it now, right?"

That's what I would have said before I read McKinsey's last post. He's saying that Hatred actually looks like a surprisingly faithful HD homage to the original Postal, gameplay, lack of story, and all. If that's the case, then there's a hidden band of information in this video that only people who've played the original Postal have access to. I haven't played it, myself. Everything I know about the Postal series comes from Postal 2 and Postal 3. I think a lot of people on this forum might be in that same boat.

Now that doesn't make it a better game in my eye than if it wasn't a remake, but it at least goes a long way towards explaining to me why a vocal minority is so enamored with it. Back in 1997, I'm sure this was very innovative, and we can't help but feel nostalgia for the games we grew up playing. It makes more sense to me now than it did a couple posts ago.

Sorry to do this, but you packed a LOT of separate ideas into the second paragraph. I'm going to need to go through it point by point:

And let's say for a second that just killing random people is all there is to the game, with a grey colour filter and executions.

That was my assumption all along. So granted.

If it laid all of this out bare and has caused this much controversy... surely it is a more or less original idea?

Just because something's controversial doesn't mean it's an original idea. In fact, I think the most controversial thing about this trailer is probably the fact that it's a video game referencing a very old and outdated idea, one the gaming community has consistently struggled to divest itself from: the idea that the only reason people play video games is for the violence.

Call it contrarian,

I don't have a problem with it choosing to do something 180 degrees from other, more popular video games. I have a huge problem with it choosing to do almost nothing, and then rolling the credits like we're supposed to be impressed with that. This isn't contrarian. I can't really call it minimalist, either. It occupies this weird space between trying too hard to present us with an idea that has been largely discredited, and being incredibly lazy about what it's actually trying to do, artistically. I say that despite the fact that it's clearly had a ton of man-hours worth of effort poured into it to get it running on the Unreal Engine. Taken at face value and on its own merits, it feels cheap and manipulative in a way that only the people trying to censor video games would be pulled in by.

call it an homage to the original postal

Yeah, that interpretation of it makes a lot more sense to me. The problem is, if your audience hasn't PLAYED the original postal, they're going to judge the game based on its own merits and their own modern-day sensibilities about how things like crime and insanity work. Basically, what I'm saying is Postal's "message" might be interpreted differently today than it would have been back in the early 90's when Motal Kombat was the new hotness. Everything from the actual Columbine massacre to the ongoing "do video games cause violence" controversy to awareness gleaned from TV shows like CSI and Burn Notice have shaped the expectations of the American gamer. Audiences have gotten smarter, and the premise of Postal has remained the same. That's part of what makes the protagonist's opening speech so insulting to me. It's basically looking me in the eye and telling me I'm an idiot.

but it seems pretty original to me

If it's a spiritual successor to Postal, that's not original. Underrepresented, maybe. But not original. By definition, the less it innovates, the more successfully it's being a spiritual successor. You can't have it both ways.

and if Spec Ops The Line can get a pass

The goal of creating a video game isn't to "get a pass" on the fact that the game has violence in it. The goal of creating a video game is to say something meaningful or at least entertaining that can only be said through an interactive medium. Some games benefit greatly from violence, some games don't need it, and some games get worse (less fun, less interesting, more confused in the statement they're trying to make or the message they're trying to deliver, etc.) the more gritty and realistic you try to make the violence.

Video game violence should always serve the underlying theme of the game. It is not and never has been the *purpose* of the game. Or maybe it was with the original Postal, I don't know. If the theme of the game IS "violence," then it could work. But violence is not the reason we have games in general, and that mentality is destructive to the industry and insulting to everyone here. Stop saying it. It's not true, and it never has been. The reason video games exist is not to drip-feed consumers violence. I don't care how big a fan you are of the original Postal, that attitude isn't helping anyone, not even yourself. I don't think I even put that fine a point on what you were saying until I started typing this paragraph.

If that's your argument, that Postal/Hatred is a good game because the only reason we have video games is to simulate violence, then you are wrong. Plain and simple. Your starting premise is false.

because of it's low rent story,

No, Spec Ops had low-rent graphics. The story was highly polished, and indeed pretty much the only reason to play it if you believe the critics.

repetitive gameplay and "War is hell" statement why can't this?

I'm starting to think you meant "despite" these last two, not "because of."

Nobody here is saying that playing Hatred will cause people to go nuts and start murdering people

Agreed.

I've seen enough people in this thread reference "12 year old psychopaths" and other references to some edgy teenager picking this game up.

I've been mostly reading pages 5-8, and I haven't seen anything like that. If it happened earlier, I apologize. Maybe you could quote some people? I'm mostly seeing people saying it doesn't look interesting, it looks like a cash grab, it looks like it's trying to be controversial for the sake of controversy, and a select few people saying it looks great but not really explaining why, other than to parrot the developer's claims that they're just "giving people what they want." I've already gone into why that attitude is dismissive and insulting to gamers. That's the kind of thing you would say to a reporter to brush off a criticism of your game as being "too" violent. It's not a design philosophy.

The logical conclusion to that statement isn't hard to reach.

You didn't show a statement. You listed some vague references to other people's vague references. Without the actual statement(s), I'm not following your logic through to the conclusion that you perceive as obvious.

Of course no one was saying it would make people go nuts

Oh, okay. That conclusion. So... that's what you thought some of the other comments were trying to hint at? Okay.

For what it's worth, I do not think that playing a video game, even a really horrible one, can make anyone "go nuts" in the sense that the game's protagonist goes nuts. (Partly because the way the protagonist goes nuts in the trailer is unrealistic and stupid, but that's beside the point.) I would honestly be surprised if anyone in this thread intended to suggest that. Mainly because we're all gamers here, and as I've been taking pains to point out, gamers are pretty much uniformly opposed to the fiction that video games cause violence.

Any time you think that's someone's rationale for disliking Hatred, you should probably explore other interrelations of what they've said before jumping to that conclusion. That's just Occam's Razor. I've given dozens of different reasons why this trailer rubs me the wrong way. I've mentioned Columbine more than once, but never in the context you're suggesting. At no point was I saying playing Hatred would make people go nuts. That's just not the way it works.

but I definitely got the vibe that people thought it was aimed at crazy loner assholes.

Not at all. The world's full of perfectly harmless crazy loner assholes. The characters Jay and Silent Bob are crazy loner assholes, for instance. (Never mind the fact that there's two of them.)

It's much worse than that. I think it's aimed at people who believe people like the protagonist actually exist.

Not just serial killers, mind you. Not just violent assholes. But cartoonishly evil sociopaths whose only goal in life is to go out gunning down a bunch of people. The kind of person who would straight up SAY to someone's face "my name is not important. The only thing that is important is what I'm going to do."

Somehow this guy managed to hold down a job, buy a bunch of guns, learn how to use them all effectively? presumably he's been hiding in plain sight all this time. He owns a house in a nice part of town where people feel safe taking a walk at night.

And, I get it. In a weird sense, I get what the suspiciously generic phrasing of the trailer might be stumbling towards. The mystique of the serial killer, exaggerated to the point of urban legend. In better hands, or perhaps given a better treatment by writers who give a damn, this could be the kind of narrative that gives a face and a voice to the dark impulses that cross our minds from time to time.

But that's not what they're doing here, and I don't think it's even what they're going for, not with any real conviction or effort. And I'll tell you the one thing that *really* keeps it from working:

You have to be dumb to buy into it, the way it's presented in the trailer. You have to be really, really dumb. Almost willfully ignorant. You have to be dumb enough to accept the premise that murderers don't have goals or motivations. That there is no story behind a tragedy.

The only people I can think of who are that bone-shatteringly stupid when it comes to thinking about serial killers are the people trying to ban violent video games.

Everyone else has pretty much moved on. Or at least stopped to ask themselves "why" during the 24/7 media coverage after 9-11. (Sorry to drag that elephant into the room, but it's another example of how the public consciousness surrounding violence has shifted since the original Postal was released. We've been through a lot. We've started thinking about it. We've started asking why. That wasn't on our minds in 1997. It hadn't come up yet.)

got a pretty good idea of why he did it, he hated life, the world at large and he chose to go out killing people. I mean say he's a social darwinist, say he's a nihilist, a manic depressive or just a psychopath, do you really need a specific label for his "ideology" or lack there of?

By default, people have reasons for doing things. The more unusual the thing they're doing, the more curious we get about what those reasons might be.

So if you leave the reasons unsaid, you make us curious. In the hands of good writers, this could be the bait that builds buzz right up to launch day, keeps us guessing all throughout the entire game and leads us to post fan theories in online forums long afterward.

But when you flat-out have the protagonist tell us, up-front, "THERE IS NO REASON, I DON'T NEED A REASON, WHY WOULD YOU THINK THAT," you do the exact opposite. You create the impression that either the protagonist is an idiot, or else the writer thinks we are.

Again, that's personal preference. I was interested beacuse it dispensed with any pleasentries and just said "Here, this trailer depicts a murder simulator with destructo physics, get hype".

It's gradually dawning on me that, no really, for some people the lack of context *is* the charm. I really don't get it. But I'll take your word for it. You're entitled to that opinion, and I certainly can't prove it false. Just? don't you want more? Don't you feel like you deserve better? A game where you play as Pyramid Head, a game where you start off bringing a gun to school for show-and-tell and then gradually descend into madness? Something. Anything.

That's fine with me, sure you can have your art games, your games that disregard story and go for fun mechanics (i.e. Hotline Miami) and I can have my murder sims which let me kill a bit of time and stress.

Hotline Miami doesn't disregard story. It's a very trippy story more concerned with reenforcing the game's theme and tone than conveying information, but it's definitely there. Everything about the game's design and the way it's presented reenforces it. Also, I thought Hotline Miami *was* one of the murder sims that let you kill a bit of time and stress. Unless by "murder sim" you literally mean a realistic, real-world simulation. But surely Hatred isn't *that.* We've already been into how unrealistic the protagonist is over and over again.

And I can't understand why people are reacting so negatively to it, how people are talking about how this game is sick or a joke of a game. People even defended GTA and Prototype for their mass murder and crime sprees which confused me. Do people want their violence wearing a fucking nice dress and some makeup? When I jack a car and run over 15 "innocent" bystanders do I have to have it in colour and do I have to get a point bonus or listen to a radio station to make it special?

You're conflating a lot of different ideas here. The underlying premise seems to be that the purpose of all video games is to serve as a murder simulation. That's not the case. It wasn't the case in GTA. It wasn't the case in Prototype. Destructive Creations is apparently insisting that it *is* the case with Hatred, but I'm here to tell you that if realism is what they were going for, they missed the mark by a mile.

Now, you could argue that they were actually going for something stylized and evocative. I would actually probably buy that argument, especially if you were able to articulate exactly what the benefit was of choosing that style over another. But for some reason, you're not doing that. Instead, you keep saying things like "What do you want from me? It's violent, just like GTA! That means you have to like it, right?" It makes you sound like you don't play video games or know anything about them. Specifically, it makes you sound like you're drinking the kool-aid of the people who want to ban video games.

That's a big part of the backlash, I think. At least on this particular website.

I'd argue that the lack of a point system or dress up does make it appealing.

Okay. Reasonable argument. You probably should have opened with that. Can you give me any greater insight into how that's a feature? Is this still nostalgia for the original Postal? (It's okay to say yes.) Or is there more to it than that? I'm genuinely curious what you're hoping they will or won't include or add between now and launch.

It's just pure chaos and violence for shits and giggles.

Ehhh kinda. But it's such *constrained* chaos compared to something like Saint's Row or Prototype. And once you've started giggling, how long until it gets old?

To paraphrase Yahtzee "It stimulates that cave man part of your brain that made you kick down your brother's sand castle".

It's honestly doing nothing for mine. And I'm in touch with my caveman brain, believe me. This just isn't doing it for me. It's trying too hard, AND somehow being too lazy, for my caveman brain to care about its antics. I suppose this is just subjective.

I mean, there's a million things they could have done with this premise! There's a billion different directions it could have taken! And instead they chose to explicitly take it Nowhere.

Like... if they'd said nothing at all? Or left the narrative implied but actually *hinted* at something? THEN my imagination would be running wild, imagining some horrible credo for the protagonist, like a monster movie where they never actually let you see the monster. But they didn't leave it unsaid. They came right out and explicitly stated that there is nothing to say. Big difference.

It just falls apart any way I try to look at it. Maybe I'm just not the right audience for this. Oh well. To each their own. If it's any consolation, Unreal Engine licensing is extremely reasonable for indies these days, so I'd imagine they'll probably be able to get by just fine on the support of fans of the original Postal.

 

[ShakerSilver]

I do love the hypocrisy of people who want this game censored or outright banned, claiming it's ruining games becoming art. Oh, you can have a politically charged game as long as it carries the banner of social justice, but if stuff like this needs to go away because "it hurts my feelings :C". Good art doesn't come from creating a hugbox in the artistic community. While I don't think this game is going to make any really intelligent statement about games or political correctness, it's existence should be stifled because people are going to be upset.

Spoiler: Now I leave you with a piece of art designed to cause a severe reaction in the art community. It is currently in a museum.

 

[Riotguards]

its a game i won't become a psychopath gunner just because i played it and anyone who doesn't believe everything the media hypes its to be (even though the media is more responsible for these mass shootings than video games)

 

[DerangedHobo]

*Snip*

I'm going to preface by saying that I should of just tl;dr my original comment because persoanlly I don't have the attention span for this. In light of that I will be addressing main points so sorry if I fail to acknowledge another part of your arguement. If I don't you can just assume that you made a point that I couldn't refute.

Also he's phrasing his rant in a strangely generic style of speech that nobody would ever use in real life.

Oh I've written plenty of misanthropic rantings in the same vein of the protagonist in my time. Granted I tried to tone down the Linkin Park undertones but nether the less I have written things like that. I think it would be a safe bet to say that this game probably isn't aimed at you but I digress.

In fact, I think the most controversial thing about this trailer is probably the fact that it's a video game referencing a very old and outdated idea, one the gaming community has consistently struggled to divest itself from: the idea that the only reason people play video games is for the violence.

In my opinion, the people who think that the only reason people play video games is for violence are fucking stupid. It's probably more likely to be for empowerment/escapist fantasies and no matter how much you divest yourself from a certain view, there will always be stupid people. And when people do demonize a game because it will make their group "look bad" is just weak willed and stopping down to their level.

You have to be dumb to buy into it, the way it's presented in the trailer. You have to be really, really dumb. Almost willfully ignorant. You have to be dumb enough to accept the premise that murderers don't have goals or motivations. That there is no story behind a tragedy.

their own modern-day sensibilities about how things like crime and insanity work

And once again, if people still believe the stereotype they're stupid. Not to pull the fallacy of relative privation but the thing that insults me is not the laughably bad or insulting intro cinematic it's the fact that the walls are falling down on our heads and two faced mongoloid news outlets who are hypocritical to the point of insanity will demonize the exact same thing that they pedal.

No, Spec Ops had low-rent graphics. The story was highly polished, and indeed pretty much the only reason to play it if you believe the critics.

But "having a highly polished story" (which I disagree with when it comes to spec-ops) should never justify playing a game which has poor graphics and even poorer gameplay. Video games are an interactive medium and needs to keep me engaged. The story can suffer, the message may be laughable or non-existent but don't sell me a game that isn't *fun*. That may be a taboo statement but if I don't enjoy playing a game or am not compelled to at least a little bit by the mechanics then it might as well be Dear fucking Esther.

that's not original

I meant how many games are doing this now? "There's nothing new under the sun" and this ties in with my point about spec-ops. "War is hell" and "Delusional PTSD Soldiers" is so far from an original idea it's pretty unreal. Spec-Ops the line has pretty poor gameplay, tied in with faux choices that force you to feel bad with a "war is hell" message crammed into it. Jacobs Ladder anyone? William Sherman? Full Metal Jacket? Saving Private Ryan? Downfall?

Video game violence should always serve the underlying theme of the game. It is not and never has been the *purpose* of the game. Or maybe it was with the original Postal, I don't know. If the theme of the game IS "violence," then it could work. But violence is not the reason we have games in general, and that mentality is destructive to the industry and insulting to everyone here. Stop saying it. It's not true, and it never has been.

It should always serve an underlying theme? Why? Why should it? Why does a game need a theme? Why can't it just be violence for enjoyment sake? I never said "violence was the reason we have games in general", I was stating that a game that is nothing but violence has a right to exist and those that state otherwise

But cartoonishly evil sociopaths whose only goal in life is to go out gunning down a bunch of people.

Well... psychopaths are a thing, spree killers are a thing. Just because he didn't state a specific ideology and only exhibited a lack of conscience and misanthropy doesn't neccesarily mean that people with this mindset don't exist. I get it if we're litterally talking about someone who came out of the womb stabbing here but otherwise there are plenty of "sane" people who can do evil things shown in the trailer.

You have to be dumb to buy into it, the way it's presented in the trailer. You have to be really, really dumb. Almost willfully ignorant. You have to be dumb enough to accept the premise that murderers don't have goals or motivations. That there is no story behind a tragedy.

But that would be to assume that I am interested in this game because of the protagonist... I really couldn't give a flying fuck about the long haired emo ****. I understand and can relate to the mindset in which you just want to kill people and like you said I'm sure we all can. The only thing I'm "buying into" is the gameplay. I wasn't making any assumptions about serial killers, it was just the opinion I got from the people who didn't like this game because of the violence. I think the protagonist is just the literal embodiment of hatred and rage, when you're insanely mad or hate something it can be "just cause" and that fact is illustrated in his lack of a reason.

Hotline Miami doesn't disregard story. It's a very trippy story more concerned with reenforcing the game's theme and tone than conveying information, but it's definitely there.

I'd say it does, your "quest" giver is a fucking telephone. There was a good Errant Signal episode on this topic. I should also apologize for using "Hotline Miami" when distinguishing a popular game with violence to a murder sim. Hotline Miami is more or less a murder sim but it's very cartoonish in it's delivery and it does have a point system, unlockables and challenge to it. As you said before it certainly has more mechanics than what hatred appears to have.

The underlying premise seems to be that the purpose of all video games is to serve as a murder simulation.

I never claimed that, maybe the devs did, I was claiming that condeming the violence in this game while giving games like GTA a free pass because they are... "comical" or satirical or that they have extra features like radio stations is pretty fucked up.

You create the impression that either the protagonist is an idiot, or else the writer thinks we are.

I got the impression that the writing was just thinly veiled reasoning so they wouldn't have to put effort into a story but hey, I'm not a writer.

I'm genuinely curious what you're hoping they will or won't include or add between now and launch.

I'm just saying that it knows what it's giving you, it makes no bones about the fact that it is just a murder simulator with some destructo physics and that the simplicity is it's beauty. When everyone is clawing at the idea that "games are an art form" I start to get a feeling of snobbyness in a way. Even GTA V tried to shoe horn in some social commentary and the saints row series has a bunch of pop culture references. I like both of these series but there seems to be an idea that every game needs a theme, every game needs a message or some sort of relevance for it's existence to be justified. While I do like a lot of games that have messages and good narratives it is nice for a game to come along and dispense with all of that.

As for what I would want in the game, I would like use of vehicles, wide range of melee weapons and firearms, unlockables and possibly a point system thrown in. Environmental effects like spreadable fire etc. would also be a nice addition. As you mentioned earlier it would be boring if it was just bare bones gun + shooting NPCs, I would like a point system and more content but I would still like it to disregard a story.

They came right out and explicitly stated that there is nothing to say. Big difference.

And the angry chimp banging on his cage inside my head likes that. He likes that it's just primal heart thumping carnage without some social commentary or pretentiousness or delusions of grandeur. Is it a "good" game? Probably not. Will I enjoy the fuck out of it? Most definitely.

 

[Weaver]

I honestly can't believe there is so much of a stink about this game yet when the original Postal released in 1997 with pretty much an identical premise no one gave a shit. This game is obviously aping it in a sense. Even down to the camera angle.

And I mean Postal not postal 2. The original Postal did not blanket things in humor. It was a pretty serious game about killing innocent civilians because you were crazy.

Spoiler